"Each day, Janice Wilson breezes down a typical Simi Valley street, past rows of look-alike houses, to a ramshackle one-acre fantasy land.
There, beneath a dozen drooping eucalyptus trees, Wilson tends to a collection of miniature trees dripping with toothbrushes, buildings made of bottles, and gardens sprouting doll heads and bedsprings.
For three years, Wilson has shouldered the task of caring for Bottle Village, a whimsical collection of 13 child-sized buildings and sculptures made almost entirely of junk.
To Wilson, the village is an inspiring creation worth preserving. But to many of the village’s neighbors, it’s an eyesore they would rather see destroyed.
The one-acre village was created by Tressa Prisbrey three decades ago and has been internationally recognized as a valuable work of folk art. It has been closed to the public for 11 years because of unsafe conditions--roofs leak, walls crumble, and the toothbrush trees and doll heads wither and rot at the whim of sun, wind and rain.
There have long been plans to restore the deteriorating structures, but a lack of community interest has left the landmark to limp along under the care of a few die-hard supporters who call themselves the Preserve Bottle Village Committee.
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Now, in order to comply with an ordinance passed several years ago, the committee must supply the city of Simi Valley with a plan by June to make the village earthquake-proof, or face demolition.
City officials say the chances of the village being torn down are slim--supporters can always ask for an extension--but Wilson says the committee cannot afford to hire an engineer to conduct the study.
Hoping to boost local interest in the village, Wilson has launched two projects: an educational video about the village and a grant-funded reprinting of a booklet by Prisbrey, known as “Grandma” Prisbrey, offering a lively introduction to the village.
“A collection of bottles, all shapes and sizes, started to find their way to my front yard,” Prisbrey wrote. “Putting them together in a heap invited me to do something with them . . . thus began Bottle Village.”
Wilson said she plans to distribute the booklet and video to schools throughout the city, with the hope that they will be incorporated into lessons on local history.
“Children in particular really love Bottle Village,” said Wilson, who said Prisbrey’s work inspired her to use junk in her own art. “They like the colors and all the neat things Grandma collected.”
Prisbrey began building the village around her trailer home in 1955, continuing to work on it for almost two decades. The project began as a simple plan to build a storage space for the 2,000 pencils she had collected from store giveaways and political campaigns.
In search of bricks, she visited a dump and discovered a wealth of the Milk of Magnesia and beer bottles that were to become the building blocks for the village.
When the pencil house was completed, Prisbrey continued to visit the dump. Each day, she filled her Studebaker truck with old tires, headlights and television tubes, which wound up as parts of rooms and sculptures with quirky names such as Rumpus Room, Cleopatra’s Bedroom, the Leaning Tower of Bottle Village and the Round House.
The village was designated a historic landmark by the state and Ventura County, and was awarded a plaque of recognition by the Folk Art Society of America." (
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